Sooo... Here I am finally sharing all that I have about my project for now, but since I have mostly plot and character development ready instead of actual gameplay examples, I decided to post here on Ideas and Projects rather than ongoing projects (even though I'm very determined to go all the way to the end).

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Sorry in advance for all the grammar mistakes I will probably make and... here we go!

Why I am doing this:

Besides it being a perfect chance for me to showcase all of my skills revolving illustration, concept art and music; I've been suffering a lot from mental illness the past few years. I have a considerable ammount of friends and family who suffer from different kinds of psychological disorders and I never empathized with it enough until I felt it on my own skin as well, and when I say that, I mean having your mental health directly interfering with your physical one.
Not only I live and I'm surrounded by this kind of invisible illness, but also I live in São Paulo, Brazil; which is the city with the biggest suicide ratio in the whole country (a very large country btw). Even though we are still not world recordists on this kind of problem, it still takes lives away everyday and is by all means an underlooked issue for we still have a lot of people who think it's drama or victimism.
My goal is to develop a story that can reach to people who go through it and tell them that there's always a way out and cheer them up, at the same time I can reach to people who doesn't empathize with it and tell them: "hey, that's all real".

How I plan to approach this subject through the plot:

Every character suffers from a different psychological disorder but none of them is clearly stereotyped. The goal is for the characters to feel real and relatable. Also, I won't be mentioning in game all of these goals I'm sharing with you right now, nor I am going to say that the characters are supposed to relate to a specific issue. I chose to do that because I don't want the game to feel like a lecture. I want it to be just as entertaining as any other game while still pulling this message forward.

The scenario and atmosphere:

Since it's a horror game, I will aim to maintain a heavy and dark atmosphere, and I've decided that almost the entire game will happen indoors. The characters's fashion are made to be "wearable" in real life and not too flashy compared to what we lived in, and my main visual inspirations are The World Ends With You and Persona, which are both rather street-fashioned-like, although I will add the "ghost horror story" factor to it.

My greatest game inspirations and refferences to this project:

Some of the games that got me into the RPG-Maker horror genre are Witch's House, Ib and Blank Dream. Witch's House's lore is greatly described in the book The Diary of Ellen, while Blank Dream can be fully enjoyed through the game itself and also brings up the subject of suicide and love towards life. Although the Zero Escape series is not a RPG, it plays a big role in my inspiration as well as it brings up the 'escape the room' mechanics, plays with timelines and is very thought-provoking.

How the game will work:

My goal there is to make a sort of "escape the room" kind of gameplay, in which you have puzzles that will take you from room to room, meeting characters and finding lost notes that gradually make the player understand the characters's background and the overall game's situation. There will be no RPG-like combat, but there WILL be stuff that kills you in the map itself. I don't want it to be just jump scares and run-away obstacles, but I want moments in the game where it will be an actual challenge to understand the ghosts attack patterns and learn how to dodge'em. The idea is to be supposed to kill the player on the first trial out of either jump scare or even a called attack, and then on his second run he can either dodge the hazard or learn the attack pattern to easily avoid it afterwards (by no means I plan to make it overly difficult like cuphead on this attack pattern stuff. After all, it won't happen in a combat-focused setting, but during a map exploration).

The plot (without too much spoilers):

Without memories of the last week, the protagonist, Noddah, wakes up into a familiar room, in which escaping out of it is the game's first challenge. As soon as she gets out of it, she starts to run into the other characters, who are already aware that they are being hunted and haunted. Although those characters aren't made to go along that well, they acknowledge the importance of teaming up to stand against those different ghosts around the environment, each one with its own peculiarities and perks.
Noddah doesn't take long to notice how dangerous and unpredictable those ghosts can be, and having so many different ways to kill their preys, she also notices that she can't die from their attacks. Whenever she receives lethal damage, she temporally loses conscience and gets sent back to her bedroom. Her memories stay the same as she can remember each time she "died" once she wakes up, but the other characters will always behave like if they've seem her for the first time. Also, the events do not happen all the same, it's not a groundhog-day concept. If the other characters die by whatever actions from the player's point of view, they are as good as dead, but they return if the protagonist "dies" as well. She's always brought back to the bedroom.
She believes that the only way to stop this is to stop the ghosts, so she helps everyone else to help each other and stop those things, periodically recovering fragments of her last memory about what happened the week before the game's events.

The characters (concept art and personalities):

There are 7 main characters in the story besides monsters and such. (The small drawings at the left of each image is what I had in mind for each character before reaching the final and big concept drawing to the right).

Noddah

Noddah, the protagonist, is a confused yet calm and collected girl who barely smiles and likes to help those in need. Although she can't remind what's happened within the last week, she can remember the rest of her life just normally. There's nothing much to it, really, it's just a normal student's life with its few highs and lows.

Autumn

She's a full time freelancer artist who stays most of her day locked in her room working for stuff that no one knows what's about (she takes a shitload of NSFW comissions, but that's just a funny trivia about her work). Since she has a coffee addiction, she's often shaking and anxious. Her humor is self-depreciative at times but she's very funny overall and makes it up to be the game's comic relief.

Kay

Of course there HAD to be the edgy character. Kay is a bass player from an underground melodic metal band and also Noddah's ex. Their break up wasn't extreme, but it's still an awkward situation whenever they have to talk to each other. Despite the appearances, Kay is a big softie (male tsundere, yay) and is often scared by the ghosts, although he tries to hide his fear behind the fact that he owns a freaking gun.

Samantha

Despite the circunstances, Samantha is probably the happiest character in the game. She's always trying to have fun and cheer everybody else around here with her horrible puns and sick dance moves she learned with her gipsy gramma.
Of course, Samantha is the small child in the drawing, while the old woman is her passed away grandmother. She's lost her grandmother in a traumatic event in which she refuses to accept her death ever since. In the game, she's often talking to someone that nobody else can see or hear.

Armin

Armin is the most kindhearted character and sometines cares more about protecting those around him than his own self.
At an early age when he came out to his parents about his sexuality, they refused to raise Armin and sent him to his grand-parents who, disgusted by that action, glady took Armin in and promissed to give him all the love a child deserves. As expected, his grand parents died peacefully from old age leaving him a large fortune that allowed him to proceed in his studies and later developing a career in botanics.

Disorder

Disorder's the main antagonist and biggest threath of all this reality. Although there are more ghosts besides her, she's the most unfairly powerful and sadistic of them all, but it's also the one who shows up the least. Disorder seems to carry some heavy grudge on Noddah, which reasons will be later described in the endgame.

Angie

She's known all across the state as one of the most skilled surgeons. Whenever there's an "impossible" operation in which everybody else claims that the patient is already dead, she shows up and does her stuff. Thanks to her, a lot of people who didn't use to believe in miracles changed their minds.
However, all of her fame was quickly stained after a disastrous incident with a pacient that was already stable and in his way to full recovery, but was soon lost by a failed move of the knife. Ever since she's been working at the small city in which the game takes place, concerned with a misterious research that nobody actually knows about.

What I have up to now in technical terms:

So far, I've worked mostly on the characters development and story flow, but I have a few character conversation sprites which are to be used doing dialogues (just like The World Ends With You or stuff) and a few pixel art for the characters, such as this one:

Or this one:

Right now I'm studying the RPG MV and how I can work into all the rooms, puzzles, scenarios and assets.
You'll have to forgive me for being too lazy to post all of the images I have worked on so far just for the sake of this post, but I've been posting them all in instagram, so just search for the hashtag #ProjectDisorder and you are likely to find some sprites, pixel art, concept art and miscelaneous illustration on the game's subject. https://www.instagram.com/eyi_noddah/?hl=pt-br
I promise that once I get the hang of RPG Maker and start to assemble it all, I'll be sure to be posting screenshots here and, whenever it's good enough to test, download links to beta testing.
Meanwhile, If you have any questions or remarks about it, I'll be happy to hear them out.

Welp, that's it for the time being. Thank you so much if you managed to read everything up to here, and I really hope to bring this project to light as soon as possible. Thank you for the support

It's really a big project, I hope you'll get there all the way.
P.S: I love your illustrations!

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Thank you!
I finally began to put everything into the engine, and I'm trying to make it 100% tileset customized. I don't know if that will screw me up later on when I have to make a whole bunch of different scenarios, tho ;-;

I'm trying to make it 100% tileset customized. I don't know if that will screw me up later on when I have to make a whole bunch of different scenarios, tho ;-;

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If you're like most people, yes it will. Completely custom is hard to do even if you've got a team, doing it yourself will definitely be tough. Make sure that you spend time working on the actual gameplay and not just making it pretty (a mistake I've made before )! Use placeholders whenever you need to, getting your puzzles tested early so you know what needs improved is pretty important.

That said, I like the look of the concept art and enjoy a good 'escape the room' puzzle, so best of luck!

Make sure that you spend time working on the actual gameplay and not just making it pretty (a mistake I've made before )! Use placeholders whenever you need to, getting your puzzles tested early so you know what needs improved is pretty important.

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Those are some really valuable advices, as I was gonna start with the visual first. hahaha
It's hard not to be concerned with the interface but it does make a lot of sense. Thank you

My next step is to make an overall wireframe of the whole world before I come back to the engine, I believe that will make the actual build-up a lot faster =P

This storyline is already amazing, I can't wait to see how you implement it in the game. Kudo's for the plot, I think it is very cool!
I also really love your art style, I think you are very talented. Keep it up! Very cool to see how you turn your illness into something creative and helpful for others.